Knight Notes

January 19, 2016

Knight Notes

January 19, 2016

Happy Tuesday!

Celebrations

Congratulations to Juli Smith on receiving the Staff-to-Staff award. Way to go Juli!

Congratulations to Angela Lawson and Pam Stratton on being Staff Members of the Month.

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Notes from Guidance

9th grades in Health – KUTO presentation on 1/19 – Sensitive topic may be the catalyst for similar stress. If a student needs to see their counselor, please let the alpha counselor know.

Kids Under Twenty-One (KUTO) will be presenting information regarding the signs and symptoms of stress, anxiety, depression, and suicide along with how to help someone experiencing stress, anxiety, depression, and suicide on January 19th, 2016. All freshmen receive this curriculum. You took health over the summer. You are assigned to attend the presentation during _________ hour today. Please report to room 229.

Students who took Health summer of 2015 will be pulled into the presentation during either 1st or 3rd hour. There are about 40 students that took health over the summer.

PE is partnering with Guidance.

English Teachers have been incredibly flexible during this enrollment period. Guidance appreciates them!

Achievement

Thank you to our PD presenters. They have done an awesome job of sharing cooperative learning structures.

Attendance

KNIGHTS @ 90: Hooray!!!! As of 1/15 FHN has 90.24% of our students attending 90% of the time. As you know the goal is to stay above 90% for the school year. Thank you for all you have done to teach our students the importance of regular attendance, and please keep up the efforts.

Behavior

Climate

The Student Climate Survey will be in your mailbox on the morning of Monday, January 25th. Detailed instructions will be emailed to you and also provided in the folder along with your surveys. Please plan to give the survey to your 4th hour class sometime between January 26th and 28th. Upon completion, all survey materials can be returned to Rae Ann Noah in the main office. You can also contact Rae Ann at 5031 to request an office TA to pick up your survey materials. Thank you in advance for your help!

Tools for Your Toolbox

I wanted to start the Tools for your Toolbox section of the newsletter as a way to share some different teaching strategies. I am sharing this strategy, but I would love to hear what you are doing in your class. If you would like to be published in the weekly Knight Notes, please send me a strategy that you are using and how you use it. If I do not have anything submitted for the week, I will share some different tools. If you try the tools that are listed in the Knight Notes, I would love to hear how it went and how you used it, so please send me an e-mail or stop me in the hall! There are a lot of great tools being used every day an North, so let’s share some of those great things!

Tool #1

How many times during your teaching have you ever stopped to wonder if your students were still with you, and whether or not they were processing or even comprehending what you were presenting? Rather than moving on, you could try the following very quick and easy strategy!

Quick-Write:

Explanation: A brief activity that can be inserted at almost any point within a lesson. It does not have to take long, just enough time for students to stop and reflect in writing what they are learning. You only need about 3 minutes. You could say something like this: “ For the next three minutes, jot down your reflections on how the Earth’s shifting plates may have directly affected the landscape of where you live.” You can even identify certain words that you would like students to use within their Quick-Write.

How it Works:

1. Select a prompt that you would like the students to address.

2. Give students a specified amount of time to collect their thoughts and jot down a response (3-5 minutes).

3. Follow this with a Pair-Share or another way of having students share thoughts. Give students an opportunity to listen to their peers and share their quick-writes.

How to Ensure Higher-Order Thinking: Go beyond asking students to explain the meaning of a concept. Ask them to make connections between the concepts and their effect on the world around then. Use open questions like “In what ways…” and “How might things be different if…” Or simple questions like “Why is this important” and “How does this relate to our lives?”

Technology

Our next Lunch and Learn will be on 1/29. The topic will be Google Classroom with Kristen DiCarlo, and Raising Cane’s will be on the menu.